h/t: reminded by comment Rufus made about Europeans loving weak Presidents and detesting strong ones… this is an illustration I use in my International law seminar on International law, the UN, and other aspects of the “world community”. It’s important to stay alert.
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US v. UN4 comments to US v. UNLeave a Reply |
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And, let’s be honest, Floyd; when Russia or China has a strong leader, acting primarily for his national interests we get a little judgemental on this side of the Atlantic/Pacific. President Obama gets that part, and that’s why he says things like, “Brits believe in British exceptionalism and the Greeks believe in Greek exceptionalism.” President Obama thinks he’s clever because he understands all nations act in their own self-interests, and he believes he acts above that reflex, cretin impulse by believing in equivalence, as his quote shows.
But, he’s not clever enough to understand that the best thing for national peace and prosperity AS WELL as global peace and prosperity is for the advanced nations to take a leadership role. We don’t yet live in the rainbow, Star Trek/Star Wars land of multi-planet, multi-species committees stabilizing the Universe through the miracle of good diplomacy. We live in a world with rogue, immature nations who believe concrete, simple, black and white things; non-Muslims = non-people (Saudi Arabia, Iran, Syria, Pakistan…), the needs of the State trump the will of the individual (Venezuela, Cuba, China, Iran again, Russia???), the strong will dominate the weak (much of Africa, some of South America, some of Asia…), people of that race/religion/ancestry/gender have less rights than my race/religion/ancestry/gender (Iran again, Syria, Saudi Arabia, much of the Middle East, Asia and Africa), Serbia…
In a world with nations like that the good, pure and strong need to use their strength to defend what is good and pure. President Obama wants to step into a boxing ring and turn a 15 round fight into a Model U.N. event. That’s not going to yield good results.
I think Obama is making the tried and true mistake of viewing the refusal to committ to an answer as mastery of the question. Endless apologies, posturing, and rhetoric with no action on solutions is a failed strategy, and I use strategy in it’s loosest possible terms. Iran is the perfect example of how failed this strategy is we’ve been backing up and drawing new lines in the sand for the last 5 years and now it looks like we’re running out of real estate. We need a leader who is a man of action.
PS. Mildly amusing is the banner ad on your page right now is for a “Master of Arts in Diplomacy”.
Krauthammer: “Look, my model UN in high school was more realistic.”
Obama has no real interest AT ALL in foreign affairs (I mean this is the iPod president, after all). He deals with Iraq and Afghanistan cuz he has to and he does so at a bare minimum — why else would Gen McChrystal resort to TV interviews to get Egobama’s ear?). I think he could care less about the military and I think he would just as soon give the finger to Iraqis as he would Israelis. He leaves our allies in the lurch…not that I like Gordon Brown, but how many times did Obama snub him?
His dealing with the Honduras situation, and now this thing about him willing to accept (ACCEPT!) a Taliban interest/ participation in the Afghanistan political process is just telling me he doesn’t care… he wants it over with ASAP cuz universal health care is important. He wants health care come hell or high water and that’s it. Cuz for whatever reason this country sucks donkey balls and must be changed from within.
Let’s be honest: the UN is for weak nations: Second-string powers who’ve lost their empires and third stringers who’ve never managed to ammount to much. The major powers – the US, the USSR/Russia, and occasionally China – have always done whatever the hell they wanted. the UN is the cub scouts, which has its place, but shouldn’t be confused with the Army, even though there’s some similarities.
In fact, we *need* something like the UN – or at least Babylon 5 – where countries can come and talk out their differences and work out treaties and stuff.
The problem comes when the US starts acting like we owe some fealty to the UN, which we don’t, and which I’m sure makes the Russians and Chinese and occasionally the EU howl with derisive laughter at our expence. The problem also comes when the UN refuses to police itself, pretends to be a government (Which it was never, never, never intended to be, quite the opposite, really) and is more-or-less unaccountable to anyone for corruption and ethics violations, and has increasingly been in the thrall of pointlessly reactionary forces rather than constructive, progressive ones.